THE “BOAR’S HEAD,” MIDDLETON.
Five and a half miles from Manchester, in the now busy township of Middleton, the old rural “Boar’s Head” inn stands, fronting the main street; a striking anachronism in that twentieth-century manufacturing centre, looking out with its sixteenth-century timbered front upon modern tram-lines and an unlovely commercialism. The projecting sign proclaims it to be that now rare thing among inns, a “Free House.” The sight of that inscription leads inevitably to the thought, how strange it is that in this boasted land of freedom, in this country that freed the black slaves, the “tied-house” system should be allowed, by which brewers can buy licensed premises and insist that their tenants shall sell no other liquors than those they supply. Pity the poor bondsman of a tenant, and still more pity the general public condemned by the system to drink the inferior brews that no one would dare to sell to a free man.
The curious late eighteenth-century addition to the “Boar’s Head,” shown in the illustration, was once the local Sessions House, but is now the Assembly Room.
THE “OLD HOUSE AT HOME” HAVANT.
At Havant, adjoining the church, as may be seen in the illustration, is an extremely ancient and highly picturesque inn, the “Old House at Home,” enormously strong and sturdy, with huge beams criss-crossing in every direction, and stout enough to support a superstructure several storeys high, instead of merely two floors. It is as excellent an example as could probably be found anywhere of a fifteenth- or sixteenth-century lavishness of material and want of proportion of means toward ends. But that should not make us grieve; no builder is guilty of such things to-day; let us rather be thankful for the picturesqueness and the strength of it. Those who axed these timbers out of the tree-trunks, and reared up this framework, built to last; and those others who doubtless will some day pull it down, to make way for modern buildings, will have hard work to do so. It can never merely fall down. The history of it is told in few words. It was not built as an inn, and was indeed originally the vicarage, and so remained for some centuries.
An inn with a similar history to that just mentioned—although by no means so humble—is the “Pounds Bridge” inn, on a secluded road between Speldhurst and Penshurst, in Kent. As will be seen by the illustration, it is an exceedingly picturesque example of the half-timbered method of construction greatly favoured in that district, both originally and in modern revival. It is, however, a genuine sixteenth-century building, and was erected, as the date upon it clearly proclaims, in 1593. The singular device of which this date forms a part is almost invariably a “poser” to the passer-by. The “W” is sufficiently clear, but the other letter, like an inverted Q, is not so readily identified. It is really the old Gothic form of the letter D, and was the initial of William Darkenoll, rector of Penshurst, who built the house for a residence, in his sixty-ninth year: as “E.T.A. 69”—his quaint way of rendering “aet.,” i.e. aetatis suae—rather obscurely informs us. Three years later, July 12th, 1596, William Darkenoll died, and for many years—to the contrary the memory of man runneth not—the house he built and adorned with such quaint conceits has been a rustic inn.
“POUNDS BRIDGE.”
A house rural now that the old semi-urban character of the great road to Oxford has, with the passing of the coaches and the post-chaises, long become merely a memory is the great “George and Dragon” inn at West Wycombe. West Wycombe once called itself a town, and perhaps does so still, but it cannot nowadays make that claim convincingly. If we call it a decayed coaching town, that is the most that can be conceded, in the urban way; for to-day its every circumstance is rustic. The “George and Dragon,” a glance at its upstanding, imposing front is sufficient to show, was built for the accommodation of the great, or at any rate for those who were great enough to be able to command the price of chaise-and-four and sybarite accommodation; but the passing stranger would nowadays be unlikely to secure any better meal than bread and cheese, and the greater part of the house is silence and emptiness, while the once bustling yard has subsided into that condition of picturesque decrepitude which, however pleasing to the artist, tells of business decay.